Full Title:

Title page recto: THE CREAM OF | THE JEST | [in italic] A Comedy of Evasions | BY | JAMES BRANCH CABELL | WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD WARD | ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK C. PAPÉ | " Le pays où je voulais aller, tu m'y as mené en songe, | celte nuit, et tu étais belle . . . ah! que tu étais | belle! . . . Mais, comme je n'ai aimé que ton ombre, | tu me dispenseras, chère tête, de remercier ta réalité." | [decoration] | NEW YORK | ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY | 1927 (see image above).

Title page verso: COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1927, BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL | FIRST PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1917 | ILLUSTRATED EDITION, OCTOBER, 1927 | [in italic] [First Impression] | Illustrations Reproduced in Photogravure by A. | W. Elson and Company, Belmont, Massachusetts | THE PLIMPTON PRESS · NORWOOD · MASSACHUSETTS | [rule] | PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (see image above).

Publication:

New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., October, 1927

Collation:

Small royal octavo [24.3 cm. (9 9/16 in.) x 16.5 cm. (6½ in.)]; xx + 244 pp.; (i) half-title; (ii) Books by Mr. Cabell; (not counted in pagination) recto blank, verso frontispiece; (iii) title page; (iv) publication data; (v) dedication (verso blank); (vii)-xi A Note on Lichfield (verso blank); xiii-xvi Introduction, by Harold Ward; xvii-xviii Contents; (xix) Illustrations (verso blank); (1) fly-title BOOK FIRST (verso blank); 3-243 text (verso blank). Pages (1), (33), (89), (123), (169), and (215) are fly-titles. Pages (2), (34), (90), (124), (170), (216), and (244) are blank. Tipped-in illustrations face pages (iii), 26, 56, 88, 104, 134, 138, 172, 186, 200, 212, and 236.

Binding:

Black cloth, gilt lettering and decorations on spine and front cover; top edge trimmed and stained red, else untrimmed. Spine: THE | CREAM | OF THE | JEST | [rule] | CABELL | M^cBRIDE. Front cover: [all in decorative script] The CREAM | of the JEST | [illustration in lower loop of "J"] | James Branch | CABELL | Illustrated by | FRANK C. PAPÉ (see image above).

Frontispiece:

"NIGHTLY HE WENT ADVENTURING WITH ETTARE" [drawing by Frank Papé] (see image above).

Dedication:

[in italic] To | LOUISA NELSON | [in italic] "At me ab amore tuo diducet | nulla senectus." (see image above).

Endpapers:

Left panel: Felix Kennaston at home, with his wife.

Right panel: Kennaston in his dreams, with Ettare.

Both panels drawn by Frank Papé, printed on grey paper (see image above).